Dealing with Overlapping Leases

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Moving living spaces is rarely easy. There are multiple things that can cause issues throughout the process, with one of them being having overlapping leases. You may think – how could one possibly be stuck between two leases? The situation is surprisingly easy to get into, and when you do find yourself in the situation, the added stress can be overwhelming.

Maybe while apartment hunting, you stumbled across your dream living space but were too scared of losing out on it while your current apartment lease ends. Thus, you have now found yourself with two overlapping leases. Or, maybe you would have found yourself in a situation where you would have faced a short period of not having a living space in between leases so you end up extending your original lease so that you aren’t homeless. You now find yourself with overlapping leases.

While having overlapping leases is an unfortunate situation, there are still ways that you can deal with overlapping leases and make the most of the situation:

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Look for a sublease

Depending on how long you are going to be dealing with overlapping leases, this may not be the proper step for you. If you are only going to be dealing with overlapping leases for a period of time as short as a few days or a week, it will hardly be worth your time to find someone to sublease your apartment. However, if you are facing multiple weeks or months of having overlapping leases, looking and securing a sublease for one living space will help ease some of the stress that comes with overlapping leases.

One of the more obvious stressors resulting from overlapping leases is the resulting financial burden that comes with it. While it’s hard enough to be paying rent for one apartment, adding another rent payment on top of that can leave you stressing on how you could possibly afford the new expenses. Have no fear, however, because you still have the chance to sublease your apartment and cover the cost of one rent payment.

When you know you are going to be dealing with a longer period of time with overlapping leases, get started on the sublease search right away. Post on some local housing pages or ask around with your friend group to see if anyone will be needing a temporary housing situation. Subleases do not have to always cover the entire rent expense, you may need to lower your asking price in order to find a sublease. Yes, it will hurt a little to pay for a living space you are not inhabiting, but the money that you are saving with having a sublease paying partial rent can make all the difference in saving your overall budget.

Life happens and you can’t always get the sublease that you want. Lucky for you, overlapping leases provides ample opportunity for you to make the transition between living spaces much easier. You don’t have to have the single big “moving day” where you hurry back and forth between living spaces before you have to turn in your keys. With overlapping leases, you do not have as much of a strict deadline over your head when it comes to making sure you are completely moved out of an apartment.

If you have a week of overlapping leases, make the move easier on yourself by breaking up your moving process over the course of several days. Divide up the heavy lifting so the move is not so physically taxing and put some planning into your moving process so you aren’t overstressing when it comes to the final days of your lease. Try to have the last day of your ending lease be one free of stress, where you only really need to go through one final walk-through and then turn your keys in.

Cancel a lease

Dealing with overlapping leases is never easy and it can be a big financial burden, one choice you do have is to get out of one of your leases. This choice will likely come with a hefty price tag, but it may be worth it for you in the long run.

For this choice, you may want to sit down and commit some time to seriously consider your options. Time and money are some of your biggest factors. The longer you are facing overlapping leases, the more you will gain by canceling your lease early to avoid an extended amount of time with overlapping leases. If it’s going to be something as short as a month, it will most likely not be worth it to cancel one of the leases.

Canceling a lease often costs a lot of money, so you need to make sure that the cost of canceling the lease is less than the amount you will be saving. You want to make the cancellation fee worth the trouble when it can save you even more money in the long run.

If you find yourself with overlapping leases, do not think of it as the worst-case scenario. With these in mind, hopefully dealing with overlapping leases will come with less stress.

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